four broken-winded bent-kneed sore-backed
uncleaned hacks to each, and driven by ragged
men in long grey coats of felt, and little hats
four inches high, stuck full of the ends of
peacocks' feathers. Burnt-down houses by the
dozen lay in ruins: the remains of fires.
There were streets paved with boulders, picked
into confusion and left in a chaos of hills and
chasms. The inns were, as usual, full of
tobacco- smoke and paved with dirt, alive
with tarakans—the Russian representatives of
the black beetle—and busy with silent
whispering groups of tea-drinkers. But these are
only the common outside features of a town in
the heart of Russia. Of Tula proper, I saw
nothing; my time being occupied in the care of our
goods and repacking of our conveyances. We
found it necessary to remove all our property to
our own rooms, and to keep good watch over it.

We only missed one pillow, a rug, two boxes
of sardines, and a bottle of wine, until Harry,
who had been storming about the place in search
of the lost articles, caught one of the red-shirted
waiters coming out of our room with a bottle
under his shirt, which proved to be castor-oil
stolen out of the medicine-chest. Harry
considered it fit punishment to make him swallow a
large dose. But when the effects of the dose
began to display themselves, the man declared
himself poisoned, and was carried to a hospital
hard-by, while we and our packages were placed
under the surveillance of the police.

Policemen brought to the inn stood sentry
at the doors of our rooms, and we were prisoners
for nearly two hours, when a doctor from the
hospital, fortunately for us a jolly Russ, came
with a captain of police. While the captain of
police tackled Harry, who, ignorant of the
language, answered "Da, da" (yes, yes), to
everything, I explained to the doctor what had really
happened. The worthy doctor having got hold of
the oil-bottle, cried,

"Bravo! Poison! The most excellent
medicine in pharmacy. Look here, captain. The
pig" (meaning the waiter) "was taken ill with
cholera, cramps, spasms, vomiting here—mind
you, here in this room—before madame and
mademoiselle. They run to the next room, so
does my friend here, a great English my lord.
What could they do? But, sir, the case was
desperate. This gentleman" (pointing to Harry)
"is a great doctor, accompanying my lord and
his family; there was no time to send for me.
What does he do? He opens his great medicine-box
—look, there it is—and gives the dying
moushick a great, dose of apernicocus celantacus
heprecaincos masta, the best remedy in the
world for cholera. I tell you, 'Yea Boch!' there
now, that's the truth."

"But," said the captain, "the moushick,
doctor, how is he?"

"Ah! the pig!" (and here he spat on the
ground in contempt), "I left the beast quite well
and sleeping. I will answer for him. Come,
captain, let us go. Poison! That is a good
joke! Come, captain. Safe journey. Good-by!"

The police captain was satisfied, however
reluctantly. With two bottles of something better
than castor-oil, and a fee, which the doctor
might or might not divide with the captain, I
paid the cost of Harry's thoughtlessness. As
we were about to start, Galen approached the
carriage, and took me aside.

"Terrible fellow that fierce-looking friend of
yours. He looks as if he could fight the town
and eat up the governor-general; but tell him
to 'box'em,' and don't let him prescribe
medicine again for any moushick. No one dares
give medicine here but the faculty, and you
cannot buy any but through a certificate from
one of our noble profession. When you return
this way, remember my name; send for me.
Grog, beef-steak, box'em, Palmerston! Ha, ha!
Adieu."

Thus throwing his whole stock of English into
his final speech, he waved his farewell, and off
we started for Orel, the next main point of our
journey.

We had spent eight hours in Tula, so that it
was eight at night before we left, and dark.
One of our tarantases had been exchanged for a
fresh one, the other not being considered safe:
and in the new vehicle I had put my children,
taking my own post for the night beside the
driver on the box. All had been comfortably
arranged for a long four days' journey without
stopping, except to change horses. We had
proceeded swiftly and comfortably for six hours,
when, in leaving a small village where we had
changed for the fourth time, and in turning a
rather sharp corner, my tarantas upset with a
smash. Thanks to the inside packing of pillows
and beds, nobody was hurt. Our calls for help
brought the "starosta" and his man from the
station-house, and by their aid we were enabled
to resume our journey. I should not have
mentioned this small incident had it not been to
show another phase of Russian manners.

The starosta here referred to, was the chief
or overseer of the stables, but the word has
a more extended sense. It is applied to all
overseers, bailiffs, and chief men over the
peasant class in stables, hospitals, farms, villages,
and estates. The starosta has great influence
over the peasants, and should be appointed by
the peasants themselves, as was the case in days
of yore before the peasantry were serfs. The
name implies age and experience, and in those
more primitive times discreet elders were elected
by the peasants, in public meetings assembled, to
represent them and take care of their interests.
To these starostas they rendered a willing
submission, indeed they and the sotnicks
(overseers of a hundred) formed the only defences
of the peasant against the baron. Peter
the Great found it almost impossible fully to
raise his taxes from the migratory peasantry,
who in his day possessed the land. The
tax-gatherer could never find the same men twice;
they were gone, and new tenants, or no tenants,
occupied the land. Peter made, therefore, a
law that at a certain date every peasant or
cultivator of the ground was to be a fixture on the
land he was then farming, and that land only